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View SlideshowRequest to buy this photoNEAL C. LAURONA Mexican immigrant who committed a misdemeanor by entering the U.S. illegally to find work was later deported but still returned because he said he couldn't make a living there. He knows he faces felony charges and prison time if he is caught for sneaking back after deportation.

Deported illegal immigrants return repeatedly -

Federal agents took an illegal immigrant to Grant Medical Center in October 2009 to collect
proof of his ties to a Mexican-based drug ring.

During his two-day hospital stay, Jose Aranda-Mora supplied the needed evidence - 92 balloons of
heroin that he had swallowed before a traffic stop in Richland County.

Three months earlier, immigration agents had deported Mora to his homeland of Mexico. But the
free ride home served as no deterrent. Since 2000, Mora has been deported four times, only to
return time and again - most recently to Ohio.

A
Dispatch investigation revealed that it is common for deported immigrants to return to the
United States despite the threat of felony charges.

In another case, Juan Jose Beltran-Coronel's fourth trip to the border with immigration agents
came after he was involved in a car crash in Kansas that killed his wife and exposed him as a human
smuggler.

On 16 other occasions, Beltran was caught in the U.S. illegally and left on his own, court
records show.

He served 5 1/2 years in prison and was shipped back to Mexico in 2002. Within three years, he
was back, living in Preble County in western Ohio.

For Antonio Galloso, deportation came in 2005. By that time, Columbus police had charged him
with domestic violence twice. But Galloso sneaked back to Columbus, where he sexually assaulted a
woman.

A Franklin County judge sentenced him to community control - similar to probation. But U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents got him instead, and federal prosecutors charged him
with illegally re-entering the country.

And ICE agents deported Guadalupe Wollum in 2007 after authorities caught her with more than 200
pounds of marijuana in Dayton. It took her a little more than three months to return to Montgomery
County, in western Ohio, where federal agents found her again.

These cases illustrate the often frustrating and sometimes overwhelming task that ICE agents
face when enforcing immigration laws.

They also show that immigrants can and do find paths back, even though returning to the United
States after deportation is a felony that carries a prison sentence of two to 20 years.

All four immigrants eventually were sent to federal prisons for breaking immigration laws. They
were sentenced to between four months and six years.

In the polarized debate on immigration, some ask: What took so long for justice?

Others, hoping for reform, say that these are extreme examples that overshadow a core issue:
Many illegal immigrants come here to live and work in peace, neither of which is always possible in
their home countries.

The re-entries are "disconcerting," said state Sen. Jim Hughes, R-Columbus.

U.S. Rep. Pat Tiberi, R-Genoa Township, said he plans to try to close the loophole that allows
some immigrants to use deportation to avoid prosecution. That occurs when ICE deports an immigrant
before local prosecutors can file charges.

"It is very important for these agencies to establish a precedent for communicating and sharing
information," he wrote in an e-mail.

"There appears to be a fundamental disconnect between the judicial system and federal agencies
like Immigrations and Customs Enforcement," Tiberi wrote. "I plan to work with the incoming chair
of the Immigration Subcommittee to close this loophole and strengthen our borders."

Aranda, Beltran and Galloso will be sent back home after serving time here. Woolum was deported
after being released in January. And after paying to prosecute and imprison them, taxpayers again
will foot the bill for their removal. According to an ICE spokeswoman, it costs $1,000 to "remove"
someone, but she did not enumerate the expenses. The total cost is more than $6,000 for each
deportation, according to ICE budget numbers.

Serious criminal histories

Some illegal immigrants who sneak back into the U.S. are desperate to reunite with family
members living here or to work, not to deal drugs or commit other crimes.

But others who return to Ohio have serious criminal histories. And some of them, now off the
radar of law enforcement, continue to break the law once they're back.

Prosecutors charged more than 100 immigrants this year in federal court in Columbus with
returning illegally after being deported.

The number of prosecutions in federal court here has jumped from 16 in 2006 to 112 in 2010.

Federal authorities say they hope that the prospect of federal prison time will deter immigrants
from sneaking back into the country.

"I think they're learning that it's not the right approach to coming into the U.S., because now
they're spending time in federal prison before getting deported again," said Corey A. Price, ICE's
local assistant field-office director.

ICE agents notify officials in a person's home country upon his or her deportation. Most
deportees don't face imprisonment back home unless they're wanted for crimes committed there.

Today, illegal re-entry cases represent about a third of the caseload for the federal
public-defender's office, according to Gordon G. Hobson, a senior litigator for the federal
public-defender's office.

"Ten years ago, it was about 5 percent," he said.

Not everyone who comes back illegally and is caught a second time is prosecuted.

Federal prosecutors say they're interested in bigger fish: people with serious criminal
convictions in their pasts, those who were deported and then committed a crime after they sneaked
back in or those who have been deported repeatedly.

"The general focus is on the bad guys, the ones that are committing crimes while here
illegally," said Vipal J. Patel, district criminal chief for the U.S. attorney's office.

Nationwide, the number of people prosecuted for coming back illegally after being deported has
increased by 175 percent since 2005, according to a report by Syracuse University's Transactional
Records Access Clearinghouse, or TRAC, which gathers and analyzes data from public agencies.

Even with the threat of prosecution, many still find re-entry worth the risk.

"You can deport someone, but if they can't feed their families in their home country, they're
coming back. That's a fact," said Javier H. Armengau, a Spanish-speaking Columbus lawyer who
represents clients in immigration and criminal court.

"I can't even count the number of clients that have been deported who came back in to say
hello," Armengau said. "One the other day brought me a fruit basket. One brought me a potted
plant."

Open and shut cases

To win a criminal re-entry case, federal prosecutors have to prove three facts: the identity of
the defendant; that he or she previously was deported; and that that person later came back
illegally.

Prosecutors often have a photo, signature and fingerprints taken by ICE or Border Patrol agents
to prove the previous deportation.

The evidence that the person sneaked back into the U.S. often is seated at the defendant's
table.

"They're not really defensible cases," said Hobson, of the federal public-defender's office.

And federal prosecutors don't often lose those cases. In the first 11 months of 2010, they won
convictions in 96percent of the re-entry cases they accepted nationally, according to TRAC. And
they accepted 97 percent of the cases referred to them.

"We don't lose a lot of cases. Period. We like it that way," said Patel, of the U.S. attorney's
office. "We prosecute folks for whom the evidence is there. And immigration cases are no
different."

On average, defendants spend 13 months in federal prison before being deported again.

Jorge Vazquez-Gallardo was sent home once in 2007 and again in 2009. In September, ICE agents
found him back in the country again. This time, he was in the Franklin County jail, charged with
carrying a concealed weapon and drunken driving.

The weapons charge was dismissed in September, and Vazquez was to stand trial for drunken
driving on Dec. 16.

When he didn't show up, a municipal court judge issued a warrant for his arrest.

But Vazquez had a good reason for not being there. He's serving a year - half the maximum
sentence he could have received - in federal prison for illegal re-entry.

Normally, an illegal re-entry case would take about six months to resolve, said Bertha Duran,
the attorney representing Vazquez. But his was put on a fast track.

"The entire process takes two to three months, and they get shipped home," said Duran, a
Spanish-speaking Columbus lawyer.

David Leopold of the American Immigration Lawyers Association in Washington, D.C., said that
expediting re-entry cases could result in wrongful deportations.

"It's not about your client being here. It's about whether or not they were properly deported,"
Leopold said. "In some cases, there may be claims to U.S. citizenship.''

The person's parent or grandparent might have been born in the U.S., making him or her a
citizen, for example.

"Judicial economy is good," Leopold said. "But never at the cost of justice."

Crime and punishment

Immigrant-rights activists say that some people in federal prison for sneaking back into the
U.S. are not dangerous and don't belong there.

"If you arrest everyone who enters after they've been removed or deported, then you are going to
be arresting people who aren't really a priority for prosecution," said Leopold about the recent
push by the Department of Homeland Security to increase prosecutions.

ICE says it focuses on immigrants who are threats to safety and national security.

Members of the Latino community make no excuses for dangerous criminals who sneak into the
country, said Jose Luis Mas, a Spanish-speaking Columbus lawyer.

"It makes us all look bad," he said. "Conservatives love to talk about Hispanic drug dealers,"
and that image hurts the chance of federal immigration reform.

Illegal immigrants who commit crimes should be prosecuted in the courts, but the majority of
people living in the U.S. illegally want to contribute positively and improve their lives, said
Ruben Castilla Herrera, an activist with Ohio Action Circle, a statewide grass-roots
immigration-rights coalition.

"When you focus on (the criminals) only, you're not seeing the whole story," he said.

Studies disagree about whether illegal immigrants are more or less likely to commit crimes in
the U.S.

In 2000, native-born men ages 18 to 39 were five times more likely to be imprisoned than
immigrants of the same age, according to the Immigration Policy Center, a nonprofit group in
Washington, D.C.

Immigrants, legal or illegal, make up 20 percent of inmates in prisons and jails, according to a
2009 study by the Center for Immigration Studies, also a Washington nonprofit group. In 2009,
immigrants made up about 7 percent of the U.S. population, census data show.

Upstanding members of the Latino community worry that their reputations are being sullied by the
bad acts of some illegal immigrants, many of whom are Latino.

"One comes here to make a better life," said a Latina immigrant who was sexually assaulted by a
man who returned to the U.S. after being deported. "They think that all Hispanics are like
that.

"For one, we all pay," she said in Spanish.

The man who assaulted her was later charged with sneaking back into the country, a felony. The
woman, who isn't being named because
The Dispatch does not identify victims of sexual assault, hopes that he is sent to prison
for returning.

While he's locked up, she said, he can't hurt her or anyone else.

Saint and sinner

Somewhere in the hills between Tijuana and San Diego, a 22-year-old from Guadalajara, Mexico,
stepped over the border into the United States this past fall.

In doing so, this man with no criminal history committed a felony.

He'd been deported about two months earlier and was warned not to come back.

But he couldn't earn a living in Mexico, he said. He wanted to make sure that his two younger
brothers still in Guadalajara will have more opportunity than he did.

The man lives with relatives in Columbus. He is among the estimated 120,000 illegal immigrants
who were living in Ohio in 2009, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan research group
in Washington.

The man requested anonymity for fear of criminal prosecution and deportation.

He said that he respects U.S. laws, but that the current immigration system offers few visas for
unskilled laborers and is unjust and unworkable.

"I came to improve myself. I went to school. I tried not to break the law. I paid my bills and
my taxes," he said. "No law is above the law of God, not even that of the most powerful
nation."

In 2002, the man was smuggled in for the first time with a group of about nine family members,
including his father. Sneaking across the border the first time is a misdemeanor, but the man was
neither caught nor prosecuted.

The group paid a human smuggler, known as a
coyote or
pollero, $2,500 per person. They paid $400 less to smuggle the man across the border
because he was 14 then.

About 97 percent of the illegal immigrants who enter the U.S. clandestinely do so across the
almost 2,000-mile border between the U.S. and Mexico, according to a 2010 United Nations
report.

When he first arrived, the man lived in Columbus - sometimes with family, sometimes with friends
- while going to high school and working to save money to send home to his family.

Eight years after the man sneaked into the country, seven ICE agents came to the apartment he
and two other men were sharing.

"They came supposedly looking for some criminal," the man said in Spanish. "But I think it was a
pretext to do a raid or something like that."

Neither he nor his roommates had heard of the person the agents sought, but they were detained
and later deported when they couldn't prove legal status.

The man said that his time at home in Mexico was a welcome vacation. He visited with family,
especially his mother, whom he hadn't seen in eight years.

Then he returned to the border to negotiate passage with one of the many coyotes just south of
the border.

He used the $3,000 he'd saved while working in construction in Columbus before he was
deported.

This time, the crossing was much riskier.

"The situation is very grave. You put your life at risk," he said. "I'd recommend that other
people who make this decision, that they think of their families."

Another person who started walking across the border with the man and about nine others was lost
in the hills. The coyote didn't stop to look for him, the man said.

"I hope he's OK," he said. "I don't know."

He said he saw evidence that coyotes and drug traffickers work together.

The coyotes were paying off traffickers, he said. In exchange, the drug dealers agreed not to
kidnap their customers and extort money from their families.

And the chances of being stopped by the border patrol are rising.

According to the United Nations, about 20 percent of Mexicans who cross the Mexico-U.S. border
illegally are caught.

But the man said his experience tells him the number is higher.

He was lucky to make it through on his first try, he said. Many he met along the border had been
stopped by authorities, fingerprinted and sent back home.